Graphene growth via thermal decomposition on cubic SiC(111)/Si(111)

Graphene has been often represented as the “Holy Grail” of the electronic miniaturisation, the new material to replace Si in order to extend the Moore law beyond the present limit [3] and achieve increased performance and energy saving . Some of the graphene expected applications include high frequency transistors, reversible hydrogen storage, lithium ion batteries [4], supercapacitors [5], sensors [6, 7], bio technology [8], transparent electrode in solar cells [9], to mention just a few[2]. However, the absence of a band gap limits severely its application in high performance integrated logic circuits as a planar channel material. Several routes have been followed to induce and control such a gap in graphene by using chemical doping, quantum dots, nanoribbons , functionalisation [10-14]. An interesting possibility is to exploit the opening of a gap caused by the interaction of graphene with SiC substrate [15], making the epitaxial growth of graphene on SiC by Si sublimation a very attractive strategy to achieve this goal. SiC is also compatible with the Si technology, and the direct growth of graphene on SiC would open the way to the direct integration of graphene in large scale electronics. As SiC is expensive, and to improve the compatibility with the Si industry, the growth of graphene on a thin layer of SiC grown on Si has been proposed [16]. In this chapter we discuss the growth of epitaxial graphene on 3C SiC (111)/Si (111) and the results obtained by several authors in this research area. Due to the hexagonal structure formed by the cubic (111) face of cubic (3C) SiC, graphene is expected to grow epitaxially, however the large lattice parameter difference should be considered in determining the growth model. In the following w e will review the details of transformation of SiC to graphene at the atomic level, ho w the graphene growth proceeds with time, and how to produce continuous large are as of graphene on 3C SiC (111)/Si (111).